Rogue - Thief-Acrobat Changes

[SealedInSong]

I used to see thief acrobats using splits with monk/barb anyway so most of them would have increased speed already. I also think that stuff like extra movement speed should not be given to everyone to make sure every class feels different. That said I hate playing characters that don't have anything to boost beyond the usual 30% striding item and in some quests it would be nice to have an option to get a speed boost especially when out of combat and maybe the thief acrobat could have a extra movement at higher lvl.

Previously, it was:
monks
acrobats
barbs

Now it's:
monks
barbs
bards

Acrobats were just gypped, that's all. It's still part of their identity.

Cleave attacks are everywhere, that doesn't make them cheap or unsuitable for flavor.

[SealedInSong]

Community, sorry for the multiple non-contiguous posts in this thread. I just feel very strongly about one of my favorite prestiges.

1] I'd like to revise my re-add showtime request.
Context: Showtime was part of the acrobat identity that I don't think should've been removed. It's the flashy part of the acrobat, that, unlike swashbucklers' typical characteristics of flair/resourcefulness/daring/panache, stems from their sheer physical prowess. It's where they display the fact that they're BAMFs and you should be in awe of them.

Request: Showtime, 2 AP
Active: Action boost (not tied to haste boost, affected by extra action boost effects). Activate this ability to gain a +6 action boost bonus to trip attempts, dodge, maximum dodge, and dexterity for 60 seconds.
Passive: 10% increase to movement speed

SHOWTIME
Readd this clicky as a T5, but with some modifications from the historical version:
Activate this ability to gain a +10 bonus to Balance, Jump and Tumble, a 25% action boost [REMOVE: Enhancement] bonus to movement speed, and a +4 bonus to Dexterity for 60 seconds. Base action boost use/day, affected by +action boost effects. [REMOVE: Consumes a use of your Haste Boost ability.]

2] Reduce the cost of the sweeping strikes, staff lunge, and vault line to:
sweeping strikes-1 AP per rank
staff lunge -1 AP per rank
vault-2 AP as current

Others have asked for this and it's a very valid request.

3] Sweeping strikes:
Change formula and cooldown to:
Balance DC 10 + FULL Rogue Level + STR OR DEX Modifier + Vertigo effects Negates trip. Cooldown: 25/20/15 seconds.

Others have requested changes to the formula, and it's critical. Remember that attack effects with excessively long cooldowns only serve to irritate the player base and not get used, or used infrequently because they're forgotten.

The DC of this absolutely needs to be reworked to be viable in EE, and though Coup de Grace requires a specific state for the monster to be in before working, it's a T5 effect with the highest DC in the game to KILL an opponent.

In this case, a T3 effect that merely trips opponents should have a DC that's close, not less than half of that.

Considering adding: on vorpal, hamstring effect on target. Ie you just broke their shins. Awesome.

4] Staff lunge: decrease animation time if possible.
Decrease cooldown to: 25-20-15 in ranks
Add: sweeping strikes formula DC to trip targets in path
Consider adding: 1d6 (scales 100% with melee power) per ROGUE level to all opponents in path

This would essentially make staff lunge an inferior version of Draconic Incarnation's flyby attack, which would make it actually useful

5] Vault
If you do not choose to include my version of the Showtime clicky, please consider adding 10% movement speed enhancement to Vault.

[IronClan]

I would really like to see Shadowdancer looked at, being probably the second weakest Destiny next to fatesinger. There is a positively received thread of suggestions for shadowdancer here

As for T/A I would like to say that of the Rogue trees T/A is probably the best off currently and compared (say) to the Monk Quarterstaff tree (Henshin Mystic) is WORLDS better. There's absolutely no reason anyone would ever make a Monk Staff user after you improve T/A this much, especially with those cores. I'll let you in on a little secret that Staff users know: T/A is already a really good tree, and Staff builds are among the highest DPS in the game even without Sneak attack damage, right now on Live. I have a Staff build that gives a Pure 20 FB a run for it's money (I wont say what he really does Forum Players wont believe it), and will immediately respec to get more Rogue levels when you publish this.

I know Monk's are not considered a weak class, and so probably wont get any "revamp" balancing attention at all... but Henshin Mystic is basically the Monk version of T/A but is such a lousy failure of a Tree due to the impossibly gimp Arcane caster focused junk that was put in it, I would like to suggest (no make that BEG AND PLEAD) that all of the Rogue T/A improvements that share an identical ability in the Henshin tree (which is a lot of them) also be updated in the Henshin tree. And I humbly request you put some of the Core improvements (dodge) enhancements into the Henshin cores. Basically the entire left side of Henshin is stuff No one would or has ever spent AP's on in the history of DDO. So just stick some of this stuff there, no one will ever notice less "Elemental words (what were you guys thinking? It's lousy AND you want 2AP's for it?)" not like Void strike is even being used by anyone (Due to the Full Tropic Thunder 8 AP (!) prerequisite tax of 4 Elemental Words you must take to get the totally underpowered Void strike T5).

What I'm saying is I would like to have the option to not feel like Rogue levels are obligatory for Staff builds, with T/A already being clearly superior to Henshin mystic currently, these changes completely gimp Henshin as a choice, and make it a non-choice. Tweaking Henshin's almost identical abilities with some of these updates avoids this widening of the gap. You could even improve things a little bit by putting momentum defense in the barren wasteland that is Henshin T5 and also putting say Shadow Dodge into the empty space at Henshin T4 and Staff Training at T5... Otherwise I'm not sure why anyone would bother being a Staff build with more than 6 monk levels...

(and yes the irony of someone playing a monk complaining about another build stepping on their prerogatives is not lost to me, in the end I'll just respec to Rogue like everyone else, IMO that shouldn't be the goal of Turbine)

[Blackheartox]

I would really like to see Shadowdancer looked at, being probably the second weakest Destiny next to fatesinger. There is a positively received thread of suggestions for shadowdancer here

As for T/A I would like to say that of the Rogue trees T/A is probably the best off currently and compared (say) to the Monk Quarterstaff tree (Henshin Mystic) is WORLDS better. There's absolutely no reason anyone would ever make a Monk Staff user after you improve T/A this much, especially with those cores. I'll let you in on a little secret that Staff users know: T/A is already a really good tree, and Staff builds are among the highest DPS in the game even without Sneak attack damage, right now on Live. I have a Staff build that gives a Pure 20 FB a run for it's money (I wont say what he really does Forum Players wont believe it), and will immediately respec to get more Rogue levels when you publish this.

I know Monk's are not considered a weak class, and so probably wont get any "revamp" balancing attention at all... but Henshin Mystic is basically the Monk version of T/A but is such a lousy failure of a Tree due to the impossibly gimp Arcane caster focused junk that was put in it, I would like to suggest (no make that BEG AND PLEAD) that all of the Rogue T/A improvements that share an identical ability in the Henshin tree (which is a lot of them) also be updated in the Henshin tree. And I humbly request you put some of the Core improvements (dodge) enhancements into the Henshin cores. Basically the entire left side of Henshin is stuff No one would or has ever spent AP's on in the history of DDO. So just stick some of this stuff there, no one will ever notice less "Elemental words (what were you guys thinking? It's lousy AND you want 2AP's for it?)" not like Void strike is even being used by anyone (Due to the Full Tropic Thunder 8 AP (!) prerequisite tax of 4 Elemental Words you must take to get the totally underpowered Void strike T5).

What I'm saying is I would like to have the option to not feel like Rogue levels are obligatory for Staff builds, with T/A already being clearly superior to Henshin mystic currently, these changes completely gimp Henshin as a choice, and make it a non-choice. Tweaking Henshin's almost identical abilities with some of these updates avoids this widening of the gap. You could even improve things a little bit by putting momentum defense in the barren wasteland that is Henshin T5 and also putting say Shadow Dodge into the empty space at Henshin T4 and Staff Training at T5... Otherwise I'm not sure why anyone would bother being a Staff build with more than 6 monk levels...

(and yes the irony of someone playing a monk complaining about another build stepping on their prerogatives is not lost to me, in the end I'll just respec to Rogue like everyone else, IMO that shouldn't be the goal of Turbine)

Im not a brainiac, but the elec and fire words are good.
Sireth + fot neck + word = lotsa free dps.

Thstaff with fire on hit stuff +epic red dragon flame robe = lotsa free dps

Void strike tho is horrible and pricey.
The only time i remember void strike being good is old epics where it could straight out kill anything, and wehn you could banish the training dummy and it would not appear again.
Went on crazy streak with that as i think i killed the dummy on every guild of every lfm i joined with "shippies plox".
Fun good old times.
Worst thing i never get is why is monks qstrike on a longer cd then rogues?
And what makes rogue acrobats so special that only they get 15% att speed with staffs?
Arent shaolin monks the real masters of staffs ?

[Thrudh]

This. I'm not really seeing anything from the proposed changes that will make rogues catch up to bards/pallys/barbs. The game now is all about dps,

Actually, the game is so easy now, that DPS doesn't matter at all...

My barbarian TR is getting 6 levels of rogue, so he can use staffs (something I've never played before)... Traps are a bonus...

It's much more fun than just playing a max DPS barb again.

The game is no longer all about DPS, because it's pretty easy to get enough DPS to handle every quest.

Maybe have an enhancement that will give scaling melee power to sneak attack? maybe 200% scaling? I think this is fair since sneak attacks can't crit anyway. Or maybe have an enhancement for thief-acrobats that will make glancing blows have sneak attack also. This will make rogues have decent dps with the condition that they don't have aggro.

But i still like good suggestions on how to make rogues stronger.

[Caprice]

too many pre's are getting speed boosts to movement. While the zerg can be good, not everyone can keep up.

I somewhat agree with you which is why we didn't add extra movement in the first pass. I don't mind if some builds arrive after the monks and deliver the finishing damage. But I can see the player's points on acrobats being quick and assassins needing to move quickly into position while stealthed in groups.

This is a good point and I think I may retract my agreement on movement speed on a second think. I think it's true that there's too much out there right now. Acrobats are nimble, not necessarily speedy, and what's wrong with letting the beefier types get to the fight first and get aggro so we can get sneak attacks? That's how I think it's "supposed to work", in a more traditional D&D environment than we have in DDO. Things like the Tumbler core probably simulate the nimbleness better than a movement speed increase would.

I use Bards for Challenge farming because the speed is so effective & fun, but I think it probably is too good and has skewed my own impression of what character speed should be now. I am almost salivating over what you can reach as a Bard while maintaining excellent combat abilities. So at this point I would like to call for a nerf. Specifically I think no class speed increases should stack with each other, period. They should stack with Speed/Striding items or Haste, but not each other. That would bring most characters down to +40% speed at most. Monks would be +60%, the fastest (SB) Bards +50%, and Warchanters could make their full party go +45% (including the people who have no class-based speed boosts). I might even say that Sprint Action Boost shouldn't stack either, but I could see either way being valid.

At that point I don't feel that T-A really needs the speed anymore. It still would be nice, but not as significant.

[IronClan]

Im not a brainiac, but the elec and fire words are good.
Sireth + fot neck + word = lotsa free dps.

Thstaff with fire on hit stuff +epic red dragon flame robe = lotsa free dps

Well you're sacrificing DPS to use a TF staff, so not a great tradeoff (one of the only cases in the game where named weapons are better).

You know the Dev's see a post like this and they are inclined to think "as long as someone thinks elemental words are good".

Normal affixes like shocking burst (or Eternal Fire on Red Dragonscale) probably wont get any free DPS due to rounding (a max roll of 6 on a 1d6 would be 0.6 and probably rounded down judging from how DDO rounds everything else I've bothered checking) so you need the affix to be 2d6 or 3d4 AND roll a 10 or more before you even get 1 point of damage. This means you'll never get 1 damage from for instance Lighting the Candle.

In any case to get 3 damage per swing from this vulnerability you would need to roll 30 elemental damage or more, so you would need 10d6 worth of elemental affixes a number which tends to only come on vorpal effects like Shocking Blow, Thunderstruck, or 5% procs like Cloudburst or 2% Lightning Strike etc.. So what we're really talking about is very little free DPS, and it wasn't free it cost 2AP's, took a hotbar slot and put your bar on cooldown when you clicked it, meaning something else was not clicked.

On the other hand for those 2AP's you could instead get 2 MP from harper (naturally already have KtA's) that's a 2% increase in melee damage... so a 200 point base damage staff hit (a low roll) gets you 4 damage that can be multiplied by crits, so straight away we're losing DPS by using those AP's for elemental words with affixes, and that's without adding to a crowded hotbar, with much more impactful attacks available. And it's EVERY SINGLE HIT... I'm not going to do the math on how much 3 damage on a 35 damage Thunderstruck that happens 5% of the time is... It's already worse than 2MP even if Thunderstruck proc'ed 100% of the time...

I can't imagine a realistic non forum theory crafted scenario where I would hotbar Elemental Words on a melee. Defending it just because you envisioned a scenario (which is frustratingly common on the forums I admit, I've done it myself) is harmful to the game ultimately and can deceive the Dev's into thinking something painfully bad is not bad. If this was proven to round up (seriously doubt it) it might be more useful than I'm giving credit for. Maybe I'll test later.

[nibel]

Sorry I can't imagine a realistic non forum theory crafted scenario where I would hotbar Elemental Words on a melee.

Elemental Word is not a character buff, but a party buff. Specially when you have 2 or more casters in your party. So, looking only at weapon procs is looking at it wrong.

I agree, however, that requiring all 4 words to get Void Strike is annoying, with each one costing 2 AP. Void Strike is decent (not great), but for 10 AP it is too expensive.

[IronClan]

Elemental Word is not a character buff, but a party buff. Specially when you have 2 or more casters in your party. So, looking only at weapon procs is looking at it wrong.

Looking at it as a party wide buff is just wishfull thinking

Do you waste 8 AP's so you're picking elements the mobs you'll face are vulnerable to? No? Well the casters are casting what the mobs are vulnerable to, so unless you're wasting an ungodly 6 or 8 AP's this is nothing but a situational buff that might possibly add a little DPS if you happen to be facing the right mobs with a Caster who's damage type happens to align with the Elemental Word you chose. Yet more "forum DDO" that is deceptive to the Dev's, they WANT to hear that someone has thought up a use for bad enhancements that way they don't need to make them good. On top of that, Vulnerability sources tend to not stack, and Many Casters bring their own vulnerability debuffs.

You're better off buffing your party by doing 2 to 8% more personal DPS on every hit, than you are, hoping the Sorc has Fire Draconic Burst so your 2AP investment in Fire Elemental Word is helping him DPS... I'm just not buying it, What about when you have Electric Word but the Caster is Fire specced? Adding DPS to the party still? Or just losing out on 2% personal DPS? Anyway I'm going to stop responding as this is off topic and it's my fault it's off topic.

[IronClan]

I somewhat agree with you which is why we didn't add extra movement in the first pass. I don't mind if some builds arrive after the monks and deliver the finishing damage. But I can see the player's points on acrobats being quick and assassins needing to move quickly into position while stealthed in groups.

Sev~

Speaking on the overall concept of speed here's my 2c, it's PAINFUL to play anything that has no movement speed perks available to it. Not just because you feel slow and appear slow on the screen, but because you can and will end up arriving at the tail end of fights unless you know the quest really well.

There's not much less fun in DDO than being an afterthought to the outcome of a battle... and this happens all the time on slow toons, I tried playing a DPS focused Vanguard (using most left over points in KotC to get juicy cleaves and smites) but could not stand being the last one to the fight even when I left the last fight before everything was dead, so I felt compelled to take Defender tree up to 21Ap's to get the 10% speed boost. If I hadn't had that available no exaggeration the character would not get played, unless the cooldown on Shield Charge leap/step ability was lowered to 15 secs.

Can't play a character without leap/wings or Sprintboost, just isn't fun, and again, for multiple reasons.

Maybe DDO needs some speed or movement options that are race/build agnostic? An auto granted feat that gives Sprint boost 20% and an elective feat that gives 50% sprint boost clickie (make them regen 1 every 2 minutes). Would go a long way to helping me "catch up" on toons without wings or class based Sprint boost.

How about a level 30 Epic feat that gives leap/step movement on a 20 sec cool down?

[Nascoe]

For Jimmeny Cricket's sake, an Assassin can splash 4 AP into Acrobat and get +50% sneak speed. It's not that hard.

Everything doesn't need to be in one tree.

People have a tendency to ask for the World, whether it makes sense or not.

Well, yeah, sure you can splash ...

On the other hand I always end up finding myself pretty limited in what other trees i can use, because I start out with Assasin, then use acrobat for speed use, then when I want to be able to do trapping, I put enough points into Mechanic to get a few passives as well as the rogue skill boost, and then I have only 3 further trees left to pick from, so it would be nice if we get some speed boost with the assasin and don't "have to" use Acrobat

[nibel]

Looking at it as a party wide buff is just wishfull thinking

Since 2007, every time someone talks about something that is not personal DPS, instakill, or save-or-suck CC, someone else goes and say it is a waste of investment because you could have been doing more DPS. The only exception in the last 7 years I'm playing DDO used to be bard songs before MotU.

Assassin's Trick is a party buff (the main problem is the long animation, not the effect itself), Elemental Words are a party buff. Shattermantle/Destruction/Tactics weapons are a party buff. Improved Sunder is a party buff. Their balance AS a party buff is up to debate, but you measuring it against plain personal DPS is using the wrong measuring stick.

[Caprice]

Looking at it as a party wide buff is just wishfull thinking... (snipped for brevity)

Or you play a lot with specific friends or guild mates and can cherry pick an appropriate element. I entirely agree that the total AP cost is too high, but getting a single element that is right for your circumstances is not too expensive. But revisions to bring sanity to Henshin Mystic are probably a better topic for the Monk revision pass, whenever that comes..

[Firewall]

(...)Shadow Dodge: (2/2/2 AP) No longer a toggle. It no longer reduces Fortification. Shadow Dodge now adds 1/2/3 to Dodge, Maximum Dexterity Bonus for light armor, and Dexterity.(...)

Does that mean it will be fixed or will it still give +2/+4/+6 DEX bonus like it actually does on the live servers?

[Severlin]

Edited OP: Based on player feedback moved the speed in stealth to Assassin, added a speed boost to tier one.

Sev~

[Rhysem]

Some nice increases, but I do not think it will be enough to compete with the recently buffed classes. Increasing the crit range/multiplier as well on some of the special attacks would help, as would adding in a more powerful cleave attack at a higher tier.

This. I came back recently and looked at swashbuckler, barbie trees with fresh eyes. In all cases I was a kid in a candy store -- I want that and that and that and that. Then I hit a builder and instead of struggling to find 30 pts to spend to unlock T5, it was easy. Actually the problem was I want to spend too much in the trees and have trouble finding points to spend in other trees.

The proposed changes to TA don't seem to give me the same feel. Run up the cores (4 or 5 ap) staff damage line (8), Thief Acro (3), quick strike (6), glancing (3), and I'm starting to run out of steam. That's only 24 or 25 pts. There's some other stuff but I now have to start going, "will this build do that" -- it has to be dex based for trip/sweeping. Want to do str based? Wasted. Lunge is cute but enemies have to be in a line -- were it a cleave type I'd be all over it. New haste boost is probably worth it too, though that's still only +3, still being a couple shy of 30 pts. Contrast that with my current main's swashy-fighter-rogue build which only gets 4 cores in swashy, but spends 47 pts there and would spend 5 to 10 more easily if I had the AP to dedicate to it.

No mercy is just bad -- they're helpless, they're already screwed, +30% damage or not. Where it'd matter -- big sacks of hp -- bosses -- aren't they usually immune to (most? all?) helpless conditions. Defensive roll -- rogue 10+ or irrelevant -- really rogue 13+ because who's taking defensive roll before improved evasion?

Does rogue fast movement stack with sb fast move, or not? Given no to barb and monk assume no, but clarity would be nice. So would anti-reqs.

[BMurph]

Edited OP: Based on player feedback moved the speed in stealth to Assassin, added a speed boost to tier one.

Sev~

Could we get a little more info on what kind of bonus type this would be? It was quite an unfortunate surprise to find out that the bonus movement speed that Stalwart Defender (and likely Sacred Defender) was an action boost type bonus and didn't stack nicely with the Warchanter or PDK movement speed boosts.

[oradafu]

Well, yeah, sure you can splash ...

On the other hand I always end up finding myself pretty limited in what other trees i can use, because I start out with Assasin, then use acrobat for speed use, then when I want to be able to do trapping, I put enough points into Mechanic to get a few passives as well as the rogue skill boost, and then I have only 3 further trees left to pick from, so it would be nice if we get some speed boost with the assasin and don't "have to" use Acrobat

And how is that different from Acrobats?

Acrobats need to dip into the Mechanic tree if they want a boost in trapping. And they need to dip into the Assassin tree for extra Sneak Attack. And Acrobats are just as tight as Assassins when it comes to spending in their own tree, before dipping to other trees, whether they multiclass or not.

I'd love for Acrobats and Mechanics to not need to dip into Assassin for extra sneak attack damage. But the Devs purposely made the trees without Core Class trees (against the player's wishes) so all the classes have generic/general class stuff split among the two or three prestige trees for each class.

[Saekee]

Edited OP: Based on player feedback moved the speed in stealth to Assassin, added a speed boost to tier one.

Sev~

Thanks, this is nice.

I think the big question facing players will be: Is this set of changes enough to not play a 15 Pally / x rogue splash and go heavily with rogue levels instead? A Paladin will have the same expanded profile on the staff, less sneak but all the paladin buffs, free cleaves etc. etc.

[FlaviusMaximus]

Based on the description, Sweeping Strikes is not including any tactical modifiers (improved trip, vertigo, general tactical bonuses, trip bonuses from the tree). Are these modifiers included and it is just not listed it in the description? If not, I believe the ability would benefit from some of these modifiers. Without them, I don't believe the DC gets high enough to make it useful in difficult content.